


Fever

by Paraxdisepink



Category: due South
Genre: Delirium, First Time, Huddling For Warmth, M/M, Sickness
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-03-19
Updated: 2013-03-19
Packaged: 2017-12-05 19:28:10
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,008
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/727070
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Paraxdisepink/pseuds/Paraxdisepink
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>RayK gets hypothermia on the their journey to find the Northwest Passage.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Fever

He didn’t look good.

I watched him from my position by the fire, what little I could see of his face between the blankets tucked up to his chin and the scarf I had wrapped around his head and neck to better hold in his body heat. His skin glowed in the faint orange light, red in patches where the wind had chafed it, but pale, very pale. A thin stream of mucous ran down onto his cracked lips, and his breath came in misty white puffs where his congested head forced him to breathe through his mouth. The fire gave some heat, but perhaps not enough.

The fever had come later, in the middle of the night. He had spent the day nursing what had appeared nothing more than a headcold he must have contracted when last we had stopped in town for supplies, and the illness was what worried me – influenza, I gathered. In Ray’s condition the body would be hard-pressed to fight off the flu and keep warm at once, and I feared that by tomorrow he might have pneumonia or worse. I had seen it happen.

I never should have left him. He was city bred – the Chicago winter mild by comparison – and thus had no chance of surviving alone should the primal cruelty of my homeland elect to rear its head. It had not been my intention to leave him long, only to scout over the next rise while he and Dief repaired the sled. Ray, it seemed, possessed a natural aptitude for fixing things, and he was run down besides. 

No sooner had I topped the snow-covered crest identical to the dozens of snow covered crests thrusting up around me did Mother Nature see fit to unleash her fury. The temperature plummeted and the wind whipped up, and the world that had been before white and grey and blue became washed away by a blinding wall of solid white alone. I could scarcely see my own hand before me, let alone my way back down.

The only thing to do had been to take what cover I could against a large jagged rock and wait. Attempting to navigate through that whirlpool could mean death or worse, losing my way. Wandering aimlessly in conditions like these had killed more people than I cared to count. 

The height of the storm’s rage lasted the better part of two hours, and in the end Diefenbaker found me, my skin raw from the violent wind and my teeth chattering against the piercing cold that threatened even me. My first thought was of Ray – panic really that Dief had left him at all, despite how I had trained myself never to let panic float anywhere near the surface. Panic was in itself dangerous, a kind of crippling poison harmful in even small doses, unlike arsenic.

Nonetheless, I would have run down that slope would the soft piles of new-fallen snow not have dragged me down like quicksand. As it was, snow still fell in large flakes from the sky and the force of the wind was like a pair of hands at my back, attempting to push me off my feet, and so I kept a cautious pace despite Dief bounding ahead of me, alerting me to the fact that something was wrong.

I found Ray unconscious after nearly another hour of searching. He was half buried in the snow, a quarter mile from where I’d left him. He had come looking for me, or else had become lost in the attempt to take shelter, and in my mind I could see him stumbling through the white madness, calling my name as he shivered and felt his concentration began to slip. God knew the same had happened to me often enough, though I had had no partner to find me, unless you counted Mark or Innusiq. 

My heart squeezed inside my chest as I dropped to my knees beside him, shoveling snow with my gloved hands in my haste to pull him out. He was limp when I finally got my arms around him, and all I could think was that I had found too many corpses this way, too many that in the end had been impossible to revive despite the amazing length of time the body could lie clinically dead in the cold and yet still be brought back. I tugged him up against my chest, letting his head rest between my shoulder and neck and steadying him with an arm around his back while my fingers fumbled under his sleeve to feel for a pulse. 

His skin was puffy and tinged with blue, icy to the touch, but his pulse was there, a faint thread of a rhythm tapped out softly against my fingertips, enough to give me hope. He was still breathing, and to my relief I counted more than the telltale six breaths a minute that would mean I would have to resuscitate him, despite how lifeless and cold he was in my arms.

The immediate course of action was get him out of the elements, and he was light enough to carry without throwing him over my shoulder. I would not have dared, in any case; moving a victim of exposure too roughly carried a risk of the heart stopping, a crucial fact too many remained unaware of. I carried him in my arms until Dief found a tiny snow cave in the mountainside, where I made a bed for Ray with every blanket and sleeping bag we had, peeled off his wet coat and overalls, and laid him in it. He shivered violently, muttering something incoherent, and I laid the back of my hand against his face and explained that he would have to rest there for a time, that sudden storms were quite normal up here in the arctic, that on average they lasted 2.6 days, that hypothermia came in slow stages and there was no reason to panic yet – anything so he would hear my voice and have something in his mind to hold onto.

I let him shiver in his sleep while I sat there listening to him breathe – shivers that shook his whole body under the blankets – and when those shivers became less violent I got a fire going. A fire could be dangerous if it warmed him too suddenly. The shivers stopped completely when the heat crept in around us, and after another hour of silence, Ray began to cough, a dry barking sound, and then he began talking in his sleep, words in a muffled rhythm, a poem or song I could not make out.

A poem . . . I found myself wrestling suddenly with memories, and I wondered why for me tragedies had a tendency to repeat themselves – my mother gunned down, and then my father, my friend Ray Vecchio shot twice on my account, and now . . . I saw Victoria from that bleak lifetime ago when I believed I loved her, lying in Ray’s place, her dark hair dusted with snow, and her voice . . . I heard her voice, echoing in my ears like chimes, reciting that poem. The most beautiful voice . . . 

I blinked. My eyes stung – the memory like a broken bone that ached from time to time, and worse in winter, naturally – and when I blinked again, I realized Ray’s eyes were open, bright with more than their customary wildness and somewhat out of focus.

“Fraser . . .” His voice was weak, though it echoed through our tiny, hollow shelter above the crackle of the fire, and he looked almost ridiculously small huddled under the mound of covers, hardly the cocky city cop I had known at all. But as I had learned at an early age, there was nothing so humbling as nature.

“Ray . . . “ I crawled over to him at once, on my hands and knees over rock and snow the fire had turned to slush. Dief lifted his head from his place at Ray’s feet, and my partner shifted, tugging the blankets closer and coughing weakly.

“Cold . . . You stick me in a freezer?”

I shook my head, though his eyes had fallen closed again, his forehead and the bridge of his nose shining with sweat. I unfolded the scarf from around his throat and wiped it away, and then carefully worked my fingers into the edge of his sweatshirt at the nape of his neck where he faced away from me. His back was drenched in cold sweat as well – another danger, given the way sweat cooled the body down. I did not need him breaking into shivers again regardless of the fever. I had to keep him warm, which meant getting him out of his sweat-soaked clothes.

I came then to the thing I had wanted to avoid, for obvious reasons. But if I did not help him fight the cold he would have no strength to fight the illness. We were partners; I had to do what I could to keep him going. 

Slowly, I peeled away blanket after blanket. He lay curled beneath almost in a fetal position, arms folded across his chest for warmth. Victoria had lain that way as well, and like Ray, she had looked utterly helpless, and all I could remember was the sheer ferocity of the determination not to let her slip away from me. I had never thought, at the time, that I would feel anything of that magnitude again. 

I started at his feet, untying his heavy leather boots and pulling them and his socks away. The skin I exposed was icy, and pink, and I took one foot in both hands and just held it, letting him absorb the heat from my fingers. He had such graceful feet, long and slender, feet that liked to dance and of course kick suspects in the head, though in truth I had never seen him do such a thing. Ray groaned into the pillow when I let my fingers slide to his toes, squeezing and moving them back and forth to stimulate the blood flow without risking damage to the delicate tissue, but otherwise he gave no sign that he was aware of what I was doing.

That allowed me to go on. I crawled back up, gripping the edge of his sweatshirt and the two layers beneath that had been dry before. It was difficult sliding his arms free and tugging the material over his head. He grumbled at me to go away and let him sleep, but once I pulled the layers away completely he dropped unconscious again. My hands sought out the buttons on his jeans, and I inched them down over his narrow hips, along with the long johns he had taken to wearing beneath. His legs were pale, covered in goosebumps, and I avoided touching them any more than I had to. 

His boxers were damp, clinging to what Ray often disparaged as his “scrawny ass,” the pale grey cloth almost transparent. To my embarrassment I realized I would have to remove those as well. My face heated as my fingers dipped into the elastic at his waist, the skin beneath slick with cold sweat. I closed my eyes as I slid the thin knit down over his bare legs, remembering that Ray had possessed more modesty than one might credit him with and that it would be ungentlemanly to look.

I half covered him with the blanket before hurriedly tugging off my own clothes, everything but my boxers. Close physical contact was the most effective method of keeping warm, and I was willing to do what I had to. Warm tea would have helped as well, but with the fever I did not trust his stomach.

He did not so much as stir when I stretched out beside him, the chill of his body a shock to mine. I lay full length against his back, gathering him close to my chest in both arms. I had never realized how thin he was, like an animal that kept himself lean for hunting and never stood still long enough to accumulate an ounce of fat. His wiry, narrow frame fit easily against my chest where I wrapped my arms tight and covered him like a protective shell. 

I laid my cheek against his, and for what seemed like hours, held onto him while the fire popped and the wind screeched outside, Diefenbaker snoring at our feet. After a time, Ray began talking in his sleep again, that low recitation I could not make out. I caught “cat” and “hat” and realized it was none other than Dr. Seuss, and that seemed so uniquely Ray that I buried my face in his neck and swallowed against a lump in my throat.

I heard her voice again, across the leagues of snow and the years and the stabbing betrayal of something so dear to me ripped apart by revenge. I heard that poem, felt her against me, naked as Ray was, her skin like porcelain. I took Ray’s hand, cold and slack, brought it up from under the blankets and slipped his fingers in my mouth.

“Fraser . . .” I was on the brink of sleep when I heard my name, the voice groggy and low. Ray was shifting in my arms, easing himself around to face me. I felt the tickle of his sandy lashes against my cheek, he was so close. My lips moved, but the words would not come, and drowsily I realized his fingers were sliding from my mouth. I shivered at the unexpected brush of his thumb against my lower lip, threatening to crack the fear that had suddenly solidified over every inch of me. Ray let out a breath, the rush of warmth fanning across my neck, before his thumb slid away, only for his fingertips to press against my lips as if he would stop me from speaking.

I mustered the courage to open my eyes. His were so blue under mine, and they looked up at me through the hazy veil of a fever dream. 

“Fraser, don’t . . .” he murmured. “There’s somethin’ . . . somethin’ I gotta do before you go . . . “ 

Go? I blinked. Where was I going? I had once declined a transfer for a better position in Ottawa to stay with him. 

His fingers stroked across my cheek, rough from work and the elements. His touch was light and sleepy, but I froze, illogically paralyzed by the fact that he was touching me at all. I remembered saying that I had felt as though I had known Victoria across a thousand lifetimes, and I remembered looking across the table at Ray the first time we had shared a meal together and realizing that had only been another delusion – it was easier to believe you were in love than accept you were alone – and now I lay there feeling as though he had touched me like this a thousand times before and I had merely forgotten what it felt like.

He cupped my jaw in one hand and tilted his face up. My eyes fell closed instinctively just before his mouth met mine, and the icy fear melted in a heartbeat at the contact as though I had never known warmth in my life.

Ray’s mouth was surprisingly soft, cracked lips not withstanding, the gentle pressure so cuttingly sweet I could have trembled like a leaf. My head buzzed with the taste of him, moist and warm, and I opened my mouth for more. I became painfully aware of every point of contact between us as I did so, the prickle of the hair on his legs against mine, the hardness of his hip fitting into the curve of my own, the slight heave of his chest as he breathed. He smothered me, and not a single cell in my body objected. 

It was a fleeting kiss, regretfully, a thing born of Ray’s near delirium, and within a moment he fell back against the pillow. My lips tingled as his slid away, and my heart sank when his eyes fell closed, even as I ran my tongue across my lips to commit the taste of him to memory. He was feverish, and in all probability unaware it was me he had been kissing. For all I knew, he could have confused me with Stella in his sleep, regardless of the fact that he’d called me by name. 

But he spoke again just as I had the thought, turning his head away from me on the pillow as if embarrassed, and his words were so low it was only thanks to my uniquely keen sense of hearing that I made out what he said at all. 

“I was jealous of Vecchio . . . thought he’d, you know, take you away . . . ”

That was not in a hundred years what I had expected to hear. Miranda rights, threats to suspects, nightmares from his alien abduction – all of that would have seemed normal enough from Ray, but this? The blood still thrummed in my veins from the delight of that kiss, but the confession tightened something in my middle. Oh I supposed I would seem natural enough were I to consider it, that one man would feel his territory threatened by another, but I had never thought myself worth such a fierce and destructive emotion as jealousy. I had rather always felt sorry for Ray, saddled with me as a partner. I had feared, back in Chicago, that he would be all too eager to return to his own life and name once Ray Vecchio returned. I feared losing him, and I never dreamed – never wished to presume – that he feared losing me as well. 

I fell asleep thinking up ways, should the subject ever come to light, of finishing what I had started to tell him two weeks ago by Sergeant Frobisher’s campfire, that he would always be my partner. But I was more tired than I thought and ended up gripping his forearm beneath the blankets instead. 

Ray had grown warmer by the time I woke again, or I should say by the time he woke me. He had rolled on top of me, pressing me flat to the bedding, squirming up and back against my body, chanting, “bloom, close, kick ‘em in the head” over and over in his sleep. He was dreaming, his movements weak for someone attempting to survive imaginary waters, but his hips pushed hard into my own and he was more thrusting against me than anything.

Although it is a fact often overlooked, I am only flesh and blood. My body responded to that pressure against my chest, my thighs, my groin. The blood rushed between my lips and before I knew it my erection throbbed against his belly as urgently as his determination not to drown. 

I panicked inwardly at the suddenness of that arousal, at how little a hard cock left to interpretation. But how else was my body to react, innocent and deprived as others might account it, to the heated friction of Ray dragging himself up and back on top of me, panting hotly against my neck? 

My hands found his shoulders and I tried gently to shove him off. “Ray, Ray. You’re dreaming,” I called quietly in his ear, my vision filled with that wool scarf and the shape of him moving beneath the blankets, my groin on fire each time he squeezed down on my erection with his belly. 

His body froze on top of mine, only to sag against me with a shaking, heavy breath. I acted quickly, twisting so that he rolled onto his side, ignoring how the flesh between my legs surged angrily to lose the pressure of him there. I thought that I would die before I let him feel how hard I was, and so I lay there listening to his breathing slow, scolding my body all the while that we had been through this a hundred times before, that Ray would never . . . would be repulsed at the suggestion . . . would likely leave . . . 

Ray’s hand found its way to my chest. I went still, bracing myself for his demands as to why we were naked in bed together, ready to arm myself with logic about bodily contact and exposure, just as I had done once before down at the bottom of Lake Michigan and received a thank you for my efforts. 

Logic floated away like dust when Ray splayed his fingers across my skin, chuckling against my neck. “Finally got you out of that uniform.”

The words sizzled through me like a current of electricity, and I jumped inside my skin. My cock jumped, still hard with wanting, and my face burned with embarrassment. His eyes were open to see it, his mouth mere inches from my own, his body tucked under my arm still, his legs tangled in mine where he had made no attempt to move away.

The hand on my chest crept down, moving idly along my ribs as he inched closer, turning toward me. His blue eyes locked with mine under that cumbersome scarf, and in the firelight I saw only a heart-clenching intensity, no defensiveness, none of the all too familiar hostility. He licked his chapped lips and smiled softly, his hand sliding to my back and further down, teasing the delicate skin at the edge of my waistband, watching my face all the while.

“Come on, Fraser, you can kiss me.” 

I clenched my teeth at the knife-edged roughness in his voice, betraying how aroused he was – it, and the gentle pain of his touch threatening to set off an untimely explosion between my thighs mortifying to a man my age. My body all but sang that he _wanted_ me to kiss him, but in the next moment I was ashamed of myself. He’s half awake, I told myself, and likely has no idea where he is. I cannot take advantage of him. 

That thought shattered completely when Ray’s hand dipped into the elastic of my boxers, startlingly hot where he had seemed dangerously cold before. I jumped when his long fingers closed around me, having never known such heat. My eyes squeezed shut with the sweetness of my cock pulsing against the pressure of his fist, only for a different sweetness to smother my mouth.

He was kissing me, deep and languid and open-mounted, and it was as though my blood had forgotten how to course through my veins. My heart went wild, racing inside the confines of my ribs, and every inch of me throbbed and pounded and begged. My mouth yielded, helpless to the heat of him, and his tongue slid into me, wet and hot enough to melt me and the snow around us altogether.

I moaned, though there was no way to get the sound past my throat. My lower body pushed toward him, and he began stroking me, my neck arching for more of his mouth. His fingers danced over the hardness of my cock as lightly as his tongue traced the inside of my lips, a lazy and curious and tender exploration, and the combination of those sensations threatened to drive me mad, running together as one fiery stream of pleasure rushing through me. I thrust impatiently into his palm, though it is not in my nature to demand, and he squeezed at me, the head of my cock threatening to burst from the sudden shock of pleasure. 

I could not seem to draw in enough air. I threw my head back and let him watch me with those bright, feverish eyes. I could barely stand what he was doing to me yet I needed more, and he understood the paradox, working his fist up and down along the stiff, tormented length of me in a rhythm that sped up with my breathing. Ray had command of me, complete control, and all I could do was close my eyes and pant some manner of prayer to the rock above me.

I suppose it took very little to throw me over the edge, no matter how I wanted to lie there drowning in that bliss indefinitely. His thumb glided down the underside of my cock and then the damp warmth of his palm smothered my balls, and when he squeezed there a strangled groan of pleasure rumbled from my chest. He let go, but only to wrap me in a fist so tight my whole body nearly shook.

The warmest caress of his thumb through the wetness trickling from the tip of my cock undid me in the end. The sweetness of that small touch was too much for the tortured, straining skin, too much for me. My lower body tightened and tremor after tremor shuddered through me, the ecstasy crashing through my brain white hot and torrid as lightning. My head fell back, and I cried out “Ray, Ray, Ray” to the firelit cave around me.

I could hear him breathing, heavy and thick and aroused. I could feel it against my neck where he lay beside me, and the sound and the sensation reminded me that I had to breathe as well. The climax should have exhausted me, given that I had never before experienced anything of that intensity. At the very least, modesty should have prompted me to get up and clean the cooling, sticky mess smeared between Ray’s body and mine. But it was as though the blinding pleasure had broken me of the restraint I had clung to all these months, and I felt emboldened, ravenous.

I turned and dove for Ray’s mouth like a man seizing a chance he might never have again. He let out a muffled grunt of surprise as I rolled on top of him, grinding his head into the pillow I pushed my mouth to his so fiercely, the woolen scarf slipping back from his forehead, blond hair tickling my skin. I kissed him until his lips opened in surrender, and I pushed my tongue inside, seeking the wetness, the taste again. I kissed him as though to make up for all the times I had wanted to but let better sense impede me, and I kissed him as I should have in the cold, dark depths of the Henry Allen – as though my own life depended on it.

He was panting when I pulled away, his lips red and his eyes glazed with a different sort of fever. “Fraser, yeah. Let go . . .” was all he could say, his hands tangled in my hair.

 _Let go_. I tensed in confusion, initially fearing that he meant of him, but he was the one holding onto my hair and I understood. He arched his head back, and my mouth descended on his neck. I ran my tongue across and sucked at the delicate skin there, while his chest heaved under me and his ragged breathing stirred my hair with broken commands of “Fraser, come on, come on.”

I had wanted to keep him warm, and now I set about devouring him, my mouth suddenly longing to be everywhere at once. I dragged my lips across his chest and rubbed my face into the balmy skin where his heart pounded and his ribs sharply rose and fell with his quick, labored breathing. “Jesus!” he gasped when I found a nipple, rolling it under my tongue until he squirmed and gripped my hair so tightly my scalp burned. I could feel him hard against my hip, marking me with wetness each time the hot tip of his cock pushed at me demandingly. 

I sank lower, stroking my tongue across the taut plane of his stomach and finally burying my head in the damp heat between his long slender thighs. They quivered at the rush of breath as I exhaled sharply, and Ray groaned something unintelligible. I took in the scent of him, nuzzling in the hollow between leg and body, in an animal enough state of mind to grow aroused again at the musky hotness filling my senses. My hand reached for him, curling around the base of the swollen, pinkish length of him, lifting my head from where his balls brushed my cheek. I could fell his pulse against my fingers, not faint and thready as it had been before, but wild and alive under that rigid pliant skin. My tongue darted out to taste that rhythm, fast but steady and radiating heat.

The sound that wet caress drew from him was sheer frustrated anguish, and then it was a low chant of “Fraser, Fraser, it’s good, it’s good, it’s good. So damn good, you gotta do something.”

I licked at him, my tongue flicking along the bottom of his cock in time with his pulse, quick and strong and lingering at the spot where his blood pounded the fiercest. He tasted of salt and heat and . . . Ray, almost sharp like some precious metal. Gold, I decided, for his hair in the firelight and the fact that he could be durable yet more delicate than one might think, and of course that he was undeniably precious to me.

He was moving, his hips twisting, his fingers curling ever tighter in my hair, letting go only to slide to my shoulders, slick with a light coat of sweat. “Oh that’s good. Fraser. Love that, yeah. Come on before you kill me,” he cried, his words choked, broken off.

Great Scot, I did not know what I was doing, but I knew the hunger in me and nothing drove a man like hunger. I gripped him tight in my fist and bent my head over him, fitting my lips around what almost seemed too much to fit into my mouth. He felt huge at first, unwieldy, smooth and cut as he was, but that only meant I had to open myself to make room for him.

His heavy, ragged breathing and the desperate bucking of his hips guided me in what to do. I bore down with my mouth and sucked at him, smothering his cock full length until it was wet and slippery and then pulling back only to wrap my lips as tightly as I could around the head. I wanted to envelope him, drink him in, yank him up from the mattress and pull him into me. My tongue went wild, famished for him, laving at him from underneath as if to crush him between it an the roof of my mouth, fascinated by how both hard and soft he felt, like marble and velvet all at once. 

Ray’s hands were everywhere, in my hair, over my neck, my back, his heels sliding up the bedding as he thrust and ground himself under me. And when the climax finally tore from him I felt the burn of his nails in my shoulders, the salty spurts of liquid scalding the back of my throat drowning out the broken words I doubted even he made sense of.

My jaw ached when I let the soft length of him gently slide from my lips, my throat still burning as if I had swallowed fire. He fell back against the blankets flushed and covered in sweat, and I let him, I let him gulp in air and within a few moments drift back into sleep. And with the sensation of my own eyes burning with exhaustion I stretched out beside him, thinking only to lie there long enough for the soreness in my jaw to fade, but of course it did not happen that way.

I did not know how long we slept, but when I woke it was to the awareness of the weight of him. He was draped over me like a blanket, his blond hair prickling my neck, his legs cradled in mine. I felt the peaceful sluggish rhythm of his breathing, my arms tight around him, the wind still howling outside, and I opened my eyes to find that we were in the dark.

He was awake, his palm sliding idly over the curve of my shoulder, tracing down over the muscle of my upper arm. His mouth touched a spot on my collarbone, and I closed my eyes as he began to nuzzle at the hollow of my throat, the sensation beyond delightful. Through the haze of it I wondered what the suspects he had worked so hard to terrify would think of seeing him so relaxed and gentle now. 

But I had to get the fire going again, had to make sure he stayed warm, and so reluctantly I caught his wandering hand in an attempt to pry it from my bicep. 

“Ray,” I whispered. “Ray, I have to get up. The fire.”

He lifted his head, only to push himself up on all fours above me. A stab of excitement shot to my groin to be on my back with my legs splayed around him, the sensation intensifying when he leaned close, mouthing at my cheek

“You’re awake. That’s good.” His breath stung my lips, and my body tingled with the gruff affection in his voice, thick and close. Much has been said above lovers being equipped to find one another’s mouths in the dark, and we were no exception. I turned my head ever so slightly and his mouth touched mine, full and cushiony, like sinking into a warm snowbank. “Been waiting,” he breathed, the sound turning into a bashful, broken laugh. “Waiting a long time, in fact.”

 _Indeed_ , I was prepared to say, but he kissed me then, full and wet and almost rough – a kiss that more than demonstrated he had regained some of his strength, thank God. But much as I wanted to lie there and let him have at me, I forced myself to take him by the shoulders and pull back. 

“Ray, you’ll exhaust yourself.”

He laughed again, giddy now, diving for my neck instead. “It’s okay you’re worth it, Ben, Ben, Benton baby,” he whispered, just before sinking his teeth into my skin.

I groaned, my body pulsing with the sharp, stinging pain. It felt wonderful, but that was unfortunately of secondary importance to the fact that he obviously did not remember the snow or the storm or our reason for being here, and thus the need to take care of himself, to eat and drink for starters now that the fever had broken. And of course there was the small matter of his having been only half incoherent last night. It would comfort me to be certain he was fully alert in this . . . pursuit.

“Ray . . .” I turned my face away and gently put my hand over his mouth. He nipped at my finger, and I gritted my teeth against a shudder. What was I to do with him? He was like a playful kitten. “Ray, listen to me. I found you unconscious in the snow after two hours in a blizzard. You were breathing, but your pulse was faint, your skin blue. I brought you here out of the cold and during the night you came down with fever. You have to keep warm, Ray. You’re still sick.”

“Sick,” he mumbled under my hand and sniffled, as if he hadn’t realized his head was still congested. Then he went still, making sense of what I had said. 

He climbed off me. I could almost smell his embarrassment at his enthusiasm of a moment ago, though there was no need for it when I was the one who should have been the color of my uniform after my abandon last night.

“So . . . um . . . you were just doing the Mountie thing, huh? Keping me warm.”

The hurt in his voice was painful to hear. He had misunderstood me. “Ray . . .” I reached out to find his shoulder, but he had moved too far away. 

“Guess I suck at this whole adventure thing too,” he sighed. “I mean, you gotta be sick of it, dragging your stupid partner out of the snow and spending every day teaching him how to do stuff that’s as natural for you as, I don’t know, breathing or something.”

Oh Ray, I shook my head, thinking of all the pathetic excuses showing him how to tie this or cut that had given me to touch his hand or lean close to him. But as it was, I took the opportunity to climb out of the blankets and crawl over to the fire. 

Getting it going again in the dark was easy enough, and when the tawny light filled the cave I found Ray curled on his side under the covers, Dief licking at his face. I sighed to see whose side _he_ was on, and picked up the clothes I had peeled off Ray hours before. Thankfully, they were dry now. 

“Anyone can fall victim to a blizzard, Ray,” I told him gently. “Now put these on.”

Reluctantly, he sat up, stifling another cough. I could not help watching the faint light play over his skin as he bent his head, tugging on his shorts and then his jeans. His hair shone gold, his limbs long and graceful, and something knotted up inside me to recall the taste of him against my tongue. It was difficult to imagine myself so unrestrained. _Let go,_ he had had commanded me, and where there had been little difference between his own body and mine beneath the blankets hours ago there seemed a hundred miles between us now. The distance . . . stung.

He spoke again when he had finished lacing up his boots. “Look, I’m sorry, Fraser,” he said without looking up. “I just thought that maybe you uh . . .”

“Who says I don’t?” I snapped without meaning to, busy pulling on my own shirt and pants. To be truthful, it irritated me just a little that he would suggest I could engage in . . . certain activities . . . out of, out of . . . Well, so casually. 

He stopped, in the middle of straightening the hem of his jeans down over the black leather, and when he looked at me he was so tentative and hopeful that I swallowed the affection swelling up in me. I had not forgotten the things he had said in his sleep, nor did I doubt that he had meant them, and I wanted nothing more than to close the space between us.

He looked down at his hands when I slid up beside him, turning ever so slightly so his back was to me. I swallowed again and cleared my throat. Words of this nature did not come easily.

“You know, Ray,” I began hesitantly. “I’m sick to death of being alone. I’m so relieved you came with me at all I’d carry you from here to the Beaufort Sea if need be. You’re my partner, and . . .” He started to shake his head, but I went on before my nerve failed me. “Well I don’t just mean the physical loneliness, of course. I’ve come to realize that since the day I’ve met you, I’ve . . .”

“Think about kissing me?” He cut me off, abrupt as usual, and it took me a moment to realize I was being rescued. I smiled, though he had not yet turned around to see it. 

“Well, of course, Ray.”

His hands moved nervously in his lap. ”Maybe fooling around a little?”

I did not know whether “fooling around” could rightly encompass all the activities I had imagined engaging him in, but once again I nodded. “Oh yes, Ray.”

“Putting your tongue on me like I’m some juicy bit of evidence down at the cold meat party?”

I rather thought we had covered that particular ground, but I nodded once more, ducking my head as color washed into my cheeks. “Mm hm.” 

He turned slowly to look up at me over his shoulder, his expression once again tentative and hopeful. I smiled at him through my embarrassment, and his lips curved up in return. He leaned closer, sliding a hand to the back of my neck, and I bent my head to meet his mouth for what might as well have been the first kiss between us – the first intentional kiss, that was, with nothing to hide. 

It was everything I could have imagined, slow and warm, and filling my senses with a taste I doubted I would ever get enough of. His lips fit perfectly with mine, and he breathed in sharply as he drew back half an inch only to lean in and take my mouth again. My arm snaked around his back, and before I knew it I had drawn him so close to my chest he was all but in my lap.

There were goosebumps on his arms though, prompting me to pull back even as the pressure of his mouth grew more and more demanding. 

“Ray,” I got my fingers between us and put my hand over his mouth once more, “You’ll exhaust yourself. You’re sick. Conserving energy is what’s needed, and tea.”

“Tea?” He stared at me with that familiar mix of confusion, affection, and irritation. “Who passes up sex for tea?”

“Well, Ray, as difficult a choice as it is, I’d rather have you alive, then, well . . . have you.”

He shook his head at that, and did not take his arm from around my neck. 

Some time passed before I got around to boiling snow for that tea, but when I did the wind picked up again outside, screeching wildly, and I had a fleeting thought of Victoria, her ghost never far from storms likes this. I lamented, as I always did, that I had not let her go, but soon enough found myself smiling at the delightful things that had come of my letting go. I looked over at Ray, lying down again with Dief, watching me with a grin on his face. There was healthy color in his cheeks now, and I knew he would be all right. I also thought it a fairly reasonable assumption that he would not mind staying here until he was well again.


End file.
